Why Did Britain Vote to Leave?

The U.K. vote to exit the EU has shocked many observers in Britain and around the world so much because they thought it wouldn’t happen. These people couldn’t imagine Leave winning because the result seemed too horrible to them to consider as a real possibility. In the days leading up to the vote, the “smart money” in the financial markets was betting that Leave would lose, and so there was an assumption that this meant something about how the referendum would go. That eliminated any sense of urgency to get more people to turn out for the Remain side, which was going to be struggling in getting its less-motivated supporters to show up in any case. As it turned out, the “smart money” didn’t know more than anyone else and was caught off guard more than most, which is partly why the negative reaction in the markets has been as great as it has.

The widespread belief that undecided voters usually side with the status quo probably contributed to a certain amount of complacency among Remain voters. If many Remain voters didn’t feel the need to show up–and turnout in many Remain areas was much lower than the national average–there may have also been some Leave voters who thought they could get a “free” protest vote without changing anything. Some people that have become accustomed to voting one way or the other without seeing meaningful changes in their circumstances may have assumed that voting either way wouldn’t matter.

Immigration was the main issue that the Leave campaign used to its advantage, but what made that especially important for their voters was that it affected a number of other important things (health, education, housing, etc.) and it was an issue on which their political leaders resolutely refused to pay attention to their concerns. It was a symbol of everything that they disliked about their own government and its relationship with the EU, and it was an issue over which they knew they had no control as long as things stayed as they are. This was probably most true for disaffected Labour voters, who have already shown a willingness to abandon their party in previous elections because they think (correctly) that their leaders long since abandoned them. There were reports of a working-class rebellionbrewing in the U.K., but many on the Remain side seem to have thought that they could continue ignoring these people.

Having had their concerns and interests dismissed for decades, these voters similarly dismissed the pleading of their leaders to vote to stay in. The lack of trust in these leaders was fatal for the Remain campaign, because its case depended so heavily on the leaders’ warnings, and they had already proven many times over that they couldn’t be trusted. The fact that these same leaders relied so heavily on scare tactics to make their case can’t have helped rebuild that lost trust. The more outrageous the fear-mongering became, the less credibility the Remain advocates ended up having with large swathes of the electorate. Decades of neglect and contempt that so many politicians showed these voters came back to bite the political class at the most critical moment.

The EU’s multiple failures over the last decade also contributed to driving an already Euroskeptic country out the door. The creation of the euro was a major blunder, and the destructive policies that EU leaders forced on other member states for the sake of the eurozone compounded the original error. The Lisbon treaty process confirmed that the EU would continue its centralizing tendencies without regard for what voters thought about that (and it also provided the mechanism that the U.K. will now use to leave the EU). Merkel’s response to the migration crisis was almost perfectly designed to generate anti-EU sentiment. British voters could see what the EU had done to other member states in these crises, and many reasonably concluded that at some point it could do similar things to them. Because the EU has no meaningful political accountability to correct these errors and was never going to have any, leaving seemed to be the best option.

I don’t know how many voters were impressed by Leave arguments that focused on self-government and democratic accountability, but these arguments cast leaving the EU as a positive and empowering action. That was probably very attractive to voters that feel that they have very little power or influence over the way their country is governed. The Leave camp presented withdrawing from the EU as an affirmation of democracy and an expression of national self-confidence. Compared to the dreary technocratic arguments coming from the other side, it is no wonder that more people found this to be the more appealing message.

MORE FROM THIS AUTHOR

Hide 33 comments

33 Responses to Why Did Britain Vote to Leave?

“The Lisbon treaty process confirmed that the EU would continue its centralizing tendencies without regard for what voters thought about that…”

That’s so right!

The realization that power would keep flowing from Britain to Brussels — and that this flow of governing power was inevitable — persuaded many people that voting Leave was the last chance to get out of the EU before it was too late.

Or maybe, there’s a collective sigh of relief from even people who voted to remain who couldn’t muster up against all the fear mongering that the vote has turned according to what they really felt —- that their country was getting away from them and and in their brain — secretly harbors th embrace of the vote as it turned.

One should find it curious that the markets have responded as they have. Not a single contract has been negated, the shipping and transportation lines are still running. The borders remains as they have. There is no clear course of action that has been laid out. Goods and services were today as yesterday and yet, the market is turmoil.

Indications of an unstable system resting on nontangible measures. Afloat not on products but on ideas and concepts and speculation — hardly a system that can be measured based on cold realities.

Just listening to the talking heads on the BBC today told me why Leave won. First, for every 1 Leave pol that was interviewed, 15 Remain pols were. Second, the amount of rhetoric and scolding, especially in the morning, by the MPs interviewed was astounding. Third, the government was MIA all day except for Cameron’s statement. Fourth, nobody accepted responsibility for the anger and discontent shown by the voters.

Those are superficial observations by an outsider. What must it be like to be ignored and scorned as a tax paying voter all these years? Gee…

My wife is English and most of her friends and family voted to Leave because there is a clear perception that the EU has become an unaccountable monster. I lived in the UK when it joined the EEC and the perception was then that it was a free trade zone and little more than that. If it had stayed a free trade zone it would continue to be popular but it morphed, even changing its name from European Economic Community to European Union, two quite different things. And immigration became the flash point, with English people coming to believe that they no longer had control over their own communities, which were before their very eyes changing in ways that they found unacceptable.

Angela Merkel owns this one. On the one hand, she threw open the doors of Europe to a hoard of immigrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa. On the other hand, she gave her brutal finance minister, Wolfgand Schauble, a free hand to destroy the youth of Europe through withering austerity policies that have produced unemployment rates in Italy, Spain, Portugul, and Greece of between 25% and 50%. At this rate, the EU may not have 10 years.

This has been building for a long time, but the Left will never understand why. They’re so locked into their mindset of complete cultural supremacy, so convinced that they are self-evidently correct, that it seems logical to them that anyone who disagrees with them is either catastrophically stupid or wilfully immoral, and therefore not worthy of being treated as an equal, but only with ostracism and scorn.

The thing is, when you don’t try to engage someone in discussion, you may temporarily silence them but you’ve given them no reason to actually change their mind. If you falsely equate silence with nonexistence then you fatally underestimate the level of opposition you encounter, which is why there have been two ‘shock victories’ for the ‘far right’ in the UK in the past year; First the ‘shy Tories’ of the last General Election and the ‘shy Eurosceptics’ of yesterday. Trump is another example, and the Left is in big danger if it refuses to acknowledge that this is happening all through the Western world, with everyone from reasonable right wing parties to out-and-out neo-Nazi groups gaining ground in polls and local governments.

It’s not too late to start talking to each other like human beings again, but it’s getting there.

“Merkel’s response to the migration crisis was almost perfectly designed to generate anti-EU sentiment. “

I couldn’t agree more. I admire Merkel. In general she’s the most astute, prudent, capable and sensible leader now living. But her handling of the refugee crisis was dumb, becoming almost willfully stupid as she doubled down on it in the face of popular opposition. Part of it can be blamed on what I take to be sincere adherence to Germany’s post-war principles of toleration, humanitarianism, and constitutionalism. But I also blame the global establishment and media, which encouraged her intransigence by warmly congratulating her for running roughshod over the popular will, which they characterized as callous, selfish, or racist, when in fact it was the natural, understandable protest of a people overwhelmed by a human flood.

The Germans, including many in her own coalition, have since expressed strong disapproval, and in due course she too will pay a political price. I hope she survives and learns from it, because I think she’s one of very few on the world stage worth saving.

As far as I’m concerned anything that puts democracy back into the hands of the people is a good thing.
The government shouldn’t try to treat their citizens like a flock of sheep destined only to continue to follow along complacently. Without any concern for the flock or their safety and well being, a wolf will infiltrate and start the flock to actually thinking.

@Angela’s Ashes – Oh, her mind’s been focused alright. Last night the BBC World Service interviewed a number of the EU diplomats meeting to discuss how to handle the British exit. The mood is entirely one of vindictive fury: Britain must pay for doing something so heretical, so nobody else dares try.

At the end of the day this was turned into a vote of confidence in the ruling elite that brought us the Iraq War, the Global Financial Crisis, the transfer of all income gains to the 1%, the destruction of the middle class and the disaster of austerity economics. It isn’t surprising the voters voted ‘no confidence’ – and only surprised it was as close as it was.

“You were right, Daniel. I was spectacularly wrong. I’ve never been so happy to be wrong in my life.”

Indeed, yesterday, I was so drunk with joy that I posted the above words on one of Rod Dreher’s posts, not noticing until this morning that I had addressed the wrong writer!! It’s a good thing I didn’t actually drink yesterday… 🙂

The only people shocked by the Brexit votes are those who ought to be shocked.

The almost uniform horror in the global media over the Brexit vote underlines how completely out of it the elites and establishments are.

They really believe in their little world of like-minded elites, constantly reinforced by a global media that affirms elite notions. It’s the only world they know.

How alien and frightening we must seem – the real human beings – real Britons and Americans – whose countries have been trashed by elite corruption and incompetence. It couldn’t possibly be that we are right and have justice on our side. It must be that we are stupid, uneducated, bigoted, that we just refuse to see.

I remember several years ago reading that the EU was cracking down on small greengrocers for labeling their produce in lbs and oz instead of metric. This was at the kind of corner shops that use handwritten signs.

I imagine years of that kind of micromanagement resulted in resentment of the EU.

I love your comment; it is entirely accurate and explanatory. It really is as though we live in another world, about which the elitist plutocrats and their media hack followers know (or want to know) nothing. I laugh when our U.S. political stooges refer to themselves as “servants” or “leaders”; they are neither, except to their fellow stooges.

“I lived in the UK when it joined the EEC and the perception was then that it was a free trade zone and little more than that. If it had stayed a free trade zone it would continue to be popular but it morphed, even changing its name from European Economic Community to European Union, two quite different things.”

Please note that the EU was never a free trade zone! It was always a customs union. That is a crucial difference. The goal was from day one to create a political union and they wanted to use the customs union to unite Europe, just like Prussia used the “Zollverein” to unite Germany in the 19th century.

Many British still believe that they joined a free trade zone in the early 1970s. No, they did not. They joined a customs union, which was on its way to become a political union. That was the goal, the mission right from the start.

“Just listening to the talking heads on the BBC today told me why Leave won. First, for every 1 Leave pol that was interviewed, 15 Remain pols were. Second, the amount of rhetoric and scolding, especially in the morning, by the MPs interviewed was astounding.”

I know, I know. I couldn’t help laughing as I watched.

It is a measure of what nasty, entitled infants they are that they’re now whining for a do-over. So convinced that no one in their right minds could possibly disagree with them. It must all be a terrible, terrible mistake …

It’s the same attitude, the basically infantile assumption that the elite gets what the elite wants, and screw everyone else, that yielded Brexit in the first place. Lost the popular vote? No problem. Vote again. And again. Until you get it right, you stupid sheep.

@pcm979 : “Oh, her [Merkel’s] mind’s been focused alright. Last night the BBC World Service interviewed a number of the EU diplomats meeting to discuss how to handle the British exit. The mood is entirely one of vindictive fury: Britain must pay for doing something so heretical, so nobody else dares try.”

I don’t doubt that there’s plenty of vindictive fury from various EU quarters.

But let Merkel speak for herself:

“Merkel said she had “deep regret” over the U.K.’s decision, but the remaining 27 members of the EU should be “willing and able to not draw quick and simple conclusions from the referendum…which would only further divide Europe.”

The chancellor said the countries should “calmly and prudently analyze and evaluate the situation, before making the right decisions together.””

Part of the reason has to be a finger in the eye to US Establishment meddlers like Obama and Clinton lecturing them about how they’re supposed to vote. It’s like Netanyahu coming here and telling us what we’re supposed to do about Iran. One’s first and natural reaction is “How ’bout you butt out and toddle back to where you came from, Mr. Foreign Meddler?”

For what it’s worth here’s what I think.The internationalist socialist elites of Europe in particular and the powerful multi-national corporations globally simply will not allow this referendum result to stand. It strikes at the heart of their common goal and shared interests – which is cheap labour flooding across open borders and the subsequent dilution of national or indigenous cultures. I suspect moves are already underway to reject the result as somehow invalid. The left will mobilise – they know they were caught napping this time ( unusual for them, I must say, but with success comes complacency I suppose ). I just can’t imagine they will take this one on the chin – it threatens their whole house of cards. If UK allowed to leave – will the Dutch go next? Perhaps even the French? No,no, I can’t yet bring myself to believe that ordinary voters – the little people – are capable of changing this vast global octopus that seeks to destroy the nation state as a political entity. But I’m a pessimist I guess.

This vote showed clear discontent with a number of issues, immigration, lack of economical opportunities, cost of living (housing) etc. For most of those the EU bears little or no responsibility.
For example, immigration crisis was precipitated by conflict and instability in middle east and north africa. This is largely a product of interventions by some European nations and the USA in these regions. It is a bit disingenuous to blame the EU and Merkel for a mess that the British government, and the British people by extension, have clearly contributed in creating.
On the other hand, the idea that Britain is exposed to a terrorist thread from Europe is laughable: there are plenty of terrorists in Britain and they certainly need no encouragement or help from anyone else in Europe.
The idea that Europe has been the reason for the diminishing economical prospects of larger chunks of the population is also bogus: this reflects globalisation and the transfer of wealth outside Europe mainly, not within it.
Finally, I strongly doubt that EU regulations regarding vegetable size and shape, or product safety have really affected the well-being of the British people, nor I believe for a second that this is why those voted to leave voted so.

The transnational elite are not confined to the EU. They run the USA. They favor unhindered movement of labor and capital. They also favor unlimited immigration. It is not because they are noble or compassionate, nor are their intentions benign. Their agenda is not so much the destruction of nation-states as their homogenization and subordination to supranational authorities. Their purpose is self-aggrandizement. It is interesting that their arguments are primarily economic. Now we may be seeing that the “little people” are in open revolt, dissent no longer to be suppressed by name-calling such as “racist”, “xenophobe”, “nationalist”, “isolationist”, etc. I certainly hope so.

“Part of the reason has to be a finger in the eye to US Establishment meddlers like Obama and Clinton lecturing them about how they’re supposed to vote. It’s like Netanyahu coming here and telling us what we’re supposed to do about Iran. One’s first and natural reaction is “How ’bout you butt out and toddle back to where you came from, Mr. Foreign Meddler?””

Aside from the fact that the only ‘One’ is in your head, what actually happened was that a bunch of Republicans in Congress eagerly applauded Mr. N.

Speaking as an elected UKIP local government representative from the East Midlands of England, I can assure you this vote will stick.
In fact it’s the largest number of Brits who have voted for anything, ever, including all Parliamentary elections.
It is quite simply the biggest democratic decision our nation have ever taken.
To understand why we did this, simply listen to the deep, deep shock of those who supported Remain. They had not the faintest idea of the strength of feeling in their own country, so out of touch they were.`

After some months of campaigning it was all perfectly clear to my activists and indeed to our Conservative MP, who decided to help our campaign, against the will of his own party. I found myself, as an acting head of local opposition and the senior UKIP activist, sharing a platform with a Conservative MP, a year earlier we were trading insults in a general election.

At the count on Thursday night we were delighted to have won. Wine was was exchanged, good will expressed. The truce is now over however, my party will be watching to ensure the exit negotiations are handled properly and if not you will hear the shout quite clearly at your side of the pond.

“In all the years I’ve been writing about political stuff, I cannot remember a time when anti-democratic sentiment has been as strong as it is right now. No sooner had an awe-inspiring 17.5m people rebelled against the advice of virtually every wing of the establishment and said screw-you to the EU than politicos were calling into question the legitimacy of their democratic cry. Apparently the people were ill-informed, manipulated, in thrall to populist demagoguery, and the thing they want, this unravelling of the EU, is simply too mad and disruptive a course of action to contemplate. So let’s overturn the wishes of this dumb demos.”

“It’s standard behavior for the right in the USA. I have never seen them accept the legitimacy of an election which they’ve lost.”

Ha ha. How about that President Gore, hey?

Of course when the left elite wants to overrule the popular will it resorts to sympatico judges. So cheer up! The referendum may be lost, but maybe you can still use some unaccountable institution like the judiciary to jam things like Bremain down the peasants’ throats.

“Aside from the fact that the only ‘One’ is in your head, what actually happened was that a bunch of Republicans in Congress eagerly applauded Mr. N.”

Ever heard tell of a place called “The White House”? Where the President lives? The guy who lives there was really angered by Netanyahu’s meddling. Lots of people were, from Obama himself on down – the State Department, most Democrats, a few Republicans, and many ordinary folk.

If you’re a sitting US senator taking Israel donor money obviously you’re going to clap like a trained seal. But the people are fed up with degrading spectacles like Congress’s annual Binyamin Netanyahu Show, sick of our government bending over for foreigners. And for the same reason, I’ll bet the Brits didn’t like Obama and Clinton lecturing and threatening them either.